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Representative Schakowsky Receives Letter of Intimidation From Former Blackwater CEO. Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: “Rep. Jan Schakowsky‘s (D-Illinois) attempt to end the multimillion dollar business of outsourcing in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t sit well with the former CEO of the notorious Blackwater company, Erik Prince, who sent a hand-delivered cease-and-desist letter to the Congresswoman threatening legal action if she continued to make ‘false and defamatory’ statements about him”: here.

“The choice of weapons is important because it radically affects what we are, and at stake in that choice is the risk of losing our soul.” —Grégoire Chamayou

I was reading the book A Theory of the Drone by the French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou when I heard that yet another American black man had been killed by a white police officer, this time in South Carolina. Actually, “killed” is too generic a word. In the video of the incident, the police officer leans forward a little, raises his gun to eye level to make his aim more precise, and shoots Walter Scott in the back as he runs away. Scott was executed. Anyone who has watched the video, which was taken by a bystander, can only be disturbed by the professional methodical coldness with which Scott is taken out with eight bullets.

It is the same professional methodical coldness with which the drone operator kills. In his book, Chamayou argues that assassination, combat, and law enforcement have become jumbled together in US counterinsurgency programs. He wants to re-separate them. He points out that the Obama administration has defended drone strikes as justified by both the laws of war and the norms of law enforcement, even though the legal frameworks regulating war and policing are quite different, indeed often opposed.

Under the laws of war, combatants are excused from the usual prohibition against killing, but on condition that they kill in carefully circumscribed ways. The killing is of and by combatants, and must take place in a declared war zone, within which soldiers are free to kill their enemy counterparts at will, even shooting them in the back, unless the target is trying to surrender. Those engaged in law enforcement, on the other hand, can hunt criminals more freely across space, but killing them is considered a last resort, justified only by exceptional circumstances. Quoting UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston, Chamayou writes that in law enforcement, “the use of lethal force should remain the exception … it is permissible only if it is the sole available means in the face of a threat that is ‘instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.’”

Whichever set of norms the United States chooses, according to Chamayou, US drone strikes are illegal. The civilian CIA employees killing people in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, countries against which the United States has not declared war, are violating the laws of war: They are not combatants and they are killing outside a warzone. At the same time, given that drones can only kill their targets or let them go free, the personnel operating them are violating the fundamental axiom of law enforcement that one apprehend suspects with the least possible amount of force, killing only in exceptional circumstances.

In its use of drones for counterinsurgency, then, the United States has melded the paradigms of war and law enforcement to its convenience and given itself an overly generous license to kill.

But the people at ground zero, African-Americans at home and Muslims abroad, don’t need videos to know the truth. The truth is that the American deployment of violence has gone badly off the rails. Violence is always described in carefully crafted official statements as discriminate or unavoidable; wrongful deaths as regrettable and unusual errors of judgement. The truth, though, is that violence is now often the first resort. Acting under cover of law, weaponized Americans have become a lawless force.

Another French philosopher, Michel Foucault, argued that imperial powers experiment with new techniques of social control in their colonies and then use them at home. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have become laboratories for new techniques of order and control that, it is now clear, have definitively failed. Chamayou quotes the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud as saying, “I spent three months trying to recruit and got only 10 to 15 persons. One US attack and I got 150 volunteers.” David Kilcullen, Gen. David Petraeus’ special adviser on counterinsurgency, made the same point in 2009 testimony to Congress: “The drone strikes are highly unpopular. They are deeply aggravating to the population. And they’ve given rise to an anger that coalesces the population around the extremists.”

When counterinsurgency fails, we can leave Iraq and Afghanistan. But we cannot leave Ferguson, Missouri and all the other American cities like it, where racially vindictive, militarized policing is costing the authorities what counterinsurgency theorists have always identified as the prize: the hearts and minds of communities. When entire communities believe that their lives do not matter to the state, the nation is in peril.

Not only military equipment from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. has gone to local police in the USA. In quite some cases veterans from these wars, some of them suffering from PTSD, have joined local police forces.

Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament (CND) speaking at emergency protest against bombing Iraq (yet again) at 10 Downing Street. “Stop denying the reality of history”. “Now, today, tomorrow, it is illegal to go to war in Iraq under the current circumstances”. “Please stop making up law as you go along”.

But while the cultural cringers in the BBC treat him seriously, in the US most people know Woolsey is a bit bananas. He was a very unpopular CIA chief around the time of Bill Clinton, leaving office in 1995. He’s hung around talking nonsense ever since.

Keane actually retired from military service in 2003, so he has no direct experience of the invasions, insurgencies and counter insurgencies of the last decade, although he has had quite a senior advisory role for George Bush.

What the BBC never says, though, is that he has a serious financial reason to be generally belligerent. Since retirement he has made a lot of money from war.

I said: “He had a very obvious financial interest in recommending arms build-up, which you chose to keep hidden.” A rather embarrassed BBC said it probably didn’t matter because “it is hard to think of any senior military figure, whether current or retired, who advocates cuts in military spending.”

However, it did concede: “The programme team do acknowledge, however, that, with hindsight, it would have been better if they had mentioned General Keane’s current interests, as well as his former role.”

I’m fairly sure the BBC has forgotten that concession, and will let former generals roam the airwaves promoting war without mentioning their arms jobs.

David Cameron is currently arguing that a new set of bombing raids on Iraq and Syria are ok despite the history of failure in Iraq — or indeed the current disaster in Libya.

Cameron says we mustn’t learn the “wrong” lessons from Iraq — like the lesson that airstrikes don’t build societies.

The BBC is doing its best to help Cameron by putting forward a lot of teachers with the worst possible qualifications.

As the bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq intensifies, the British parliament is due to meet today to line up behind the US-led drive to reassert control over the entire Middle East: here.

It’s come to light that the top commander of the American mercenary company Blackwater threatened to kill government officials sent to investigate the firm. The incident allegedly took place just weeks before one Blackwater unit killed 17 civilians in the Iraqi capital. Despite rebranding and renaming, the company has failed to escape its past – as Marina Portnaya explains.

It has been seven years since guards with the worldwide security firm Blackwater turned Baghdad’s Nisour Square into a shooting gallery, killing 14 local civilians “without cause”, sparking fury around the globe and plunging the United States into a spasm of soul-searching over what it had wrought in Iraq. This week as the world is once again focused on Iraq, at last justice will be done – or attempted.

That is the burden placed on a jury in a federal court in Washington DC, which since June has been hearing testimony in the trial of four Blackwater employees who were in the square when the conflagration started. “The jurors’ job is a search for truth,” US Attorney Anthony Asuncion asserted in his closing argument on Wednesday.

The fog of the Iraq war and certainly of events in that square on 16 September 2007 has swirled thick in the courtroom of US District Judge Royce Lamberth for 10 weeks. Dozens of survivors and relatives of those who died were flown in from Iraq as witnesses. So gruelling was some of the testimony one juror was excused by the judge because she said she could no longer sleep. Now it’s over: jury deliberations are set to begin on Tuesday.

Much of the world – and certainly the citizens of Iraq – may have reached their verdicts long ago: the mercenaries of Blackwater, which has since changed its name twice in an effort to shake off the legacy of Nisour, ran amok, opening fire with complete contempt for the lives of innocent Iraqis, because of a wholly imagined threat to a convoy that was carrying a US State Department official.

The trial is a moment, potentially, for the US to offer some amends to Iraq for what happened in the square, to admit to an atrocity that should never have happened. And it is a moment to apply just a little, and very belated, salve on the souls of those Iraqis whose family members were slaughtered. It may also offer a chance to the US to feel just a tiny bit less guilty. Nisour Square was arguably the nadir of America’s rip through Iraq, rivalled only by the unveiling of the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

Three of the defendants – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard – are facing manslaughter charges. The fourth, Nicholas Slatten, is accused of murder. Some of their former colleagues from Blackwater, which had been contracted by the State Department to provide security in Baghdad, appeared as prosecution witnesses.

“These men took something that did not belong to them; the lives of 14 human beings… They were turned into bloody bullet-riddled corpses at the hands of these men,” Mr Asuncion told the jury in closing arguments. One man, he recalled, had told the court of opening the door of a car caught in the gunfire “and his son’s brains fell out at his feet”.

Nobody has contested that the bullets that killed 17 people that day and seriously wounded another 20, were fired by employees of Blackwater or that they had made a terrible mistake. But key to the case is the defence assertion that the men were reacting to what they in the heat of the moment thought was a legitimate threat. “There’s a lot of tragedy here,” said William Coffield, a defence lawyer. “But it’s not the fault of these four.”

One car bomb had already gone off that morning and the Blackwater team was securing the square so the convoy carrying the US official could pass through as it rushed to the protected Green Zone. One focus of the trial was a white Kia which, according to the defence, began to move forward while other traffic was stopped, prompting the defendants to fear it was another car bomb. The other is a second contention by the defendants – that they at the same time came under AK-47 fire, they assumed from insurgent snipers in the area.

The car, as it turned out, was being driven by a medical student. According to the prosecution, its movement forward occurred only after he was shot. His mother, in the passenger seat, was also shot dead. Both were incinerated when the car caught fire. Meanwhile the prosecution rejected the claim of incoming fire. “There was not a single dead insurgent on the scene,” Mr Asuncion said. “None of these people were armed.”

Mr Slatten faces a possible life sentence if convicted and the other three defendants 30 years each behind bars. Arguably, others should have been in the dock with them. Even leaving aside the issue of how the US found itself in Iraq in the first place, also worth examining is the State Department willingness at the time to give so much responsibility to a private mercenary outfit with so little accountability. The men may be acquitted, of course. If the jury returns four convictions, then perhaps there will be a little easing of one nation’s conscience and another nation’s anger. But even that might not feel much like justice.

FOUR BLACKWATER GUARDS CONVICTED IN 2007 SHOOTINGS “Four former Blackwater security guards were convicted Wednesday in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis in Baghdad, an incident that inflamed anti-American sentiment around the globe and was denounced by critics as an illustration of a war gone horribly wrong. The men claimed self-defense, but federal prosecutors argued that they had shown ‘a grave indifference’ to the carnage their actions would cause. All four were ordered immediately to jail.” [AP]

A federal court jury convicted four former Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries on charges of murder and manslaughter Wednesday for their role in the 2007 massacre in Nisour Square in Baghdad, which left 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians dead and another 20 wounded: here.

WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) – U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten to life in prison for murder in connection with the 2007 massacre of 14 unarmed Iraqis, closing a chapter of the U.S. war in Iraq that tested relations between the two countries: here.

A federal district court judge sentenced four former Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries to lengthy prison terms on Monday for their role in the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough and Devin Heard were convicted on charges of first-degree murder and manslaughter by a federal jury in October 2014. The four were part of a security team working for the US State Department in Iraq: here.

US DEFENCE lawyers vowed yesterday to appeal after four former Blackwater private security guards were given lengthy prison terms over the 2007 massacre of unarmed civilians in Iraq. In Washington, District Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced former guard Nicholas Slatten to life in prison for first-degree murder. Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard each received 30 years and one day in jail for offences including manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using firearms while committing a felony. The shooting spree in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square during which the offences were committed led to the deaths of 14 civilians and wounded 17 more: here.

In the trial that began June 11 in US District Court in Washington, DC, Nicholas Slatten is accused of first-degree murder, and Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty and Paul Slough are on trial for voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges.

If convicted, Slatten could be sentenced to life in prison, while the other defendants face a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years if convicted of the gun charge and at least one other charge. The former Blackwater guards have pled not guilty to all charges. The US Justice Department dropped charges against a fifth guard and a sixth reached a plea deal.

The events of September 16, 2007 have come to be emblematic of the brutal repression of the Iraqi people at the hands of the US military and its private contractor accomplices in years of neocolonial repression. An Iraqi government probe, as well as independent investigations by the New York Times and Washington Post, have already determined that the Blackwater mercenaries’ attack was unprovoked, and that they fired on unarmed civilians.

The FBI is coordinating arrangements for more than four dozen Iraqi citizens, including relatives of those killed in the attack, to travel to Washington in the coming months to testify in a trial expected to last months. US authorities refused Iraqi government demands for the Blackwater guards to stand trial in Iraq, and charges were dropped in 2009 before being reinstated in 2011 by a US federal appeals court.

In the prosecution’s opening statements, Assistant US Attorney T. Patrick Martin said some of the victims were “simply trying to get out” of the way of the gunfire of the Blackwater guards. He said that immediately after the guards got back to their base, they began circulating the lie that there were insurgents in the area that posed a threat to the security contractors.

Martin said that it took four days for the US State Department, which had hired Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Baghdad, to arrive on the scene to investigate the shootings. He said their investigation was haphazard and incomplete and that “most of all it seemed bent on clearing the contractors” of any wrongdoing.

Martin displayed graphic photos and video of the scene in Baghdad on the day of the shootings, including a picture he described as that of motorist Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, who was the first to be shot in the head. Blackwater’s Slatten is charged with first-degree murder in his death.

The Times reported on the government’s first witness, Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, who broke down on the witness stand last week as he recounted how his nine-year-old son Ali was shot in the head while riding in the back seat of the family car.

Mr. Kinani sobbed so uncontrollably that presiding Judge Royce C. Lamberth sent the jury out of the room. One juror, who said she had been too haunted by witnesses’ testimony to sleep, was excused by the judge from service.

The Blackwater mercenaries’ defense maintains that the guards acted in self-defense and were fired upon by what they perceived to be possible suicide car bombers. However, according to the New York Times report of the incident published October 3, 2007, the car carrying the first people to be killed did not approach the Blackwater convoy in the square until the driver—subsequently identified as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed—had been shot in the head and lost control of the vehicle.

Also testifying last week was Sarhan Deab Abdul Moniem, who was a traffic officer when the convoy of Blackwater trucks pulled into his traffic circle in Nisour Square and started shooting. Speaking through an interpreter, Moniem recalled how he ran to a white Kia sedan, where Mahassin Kadhim, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed’s mother, cradled her dead son’s head on her shoulder.

“I asked her to open up the door so I could help her,” Moniem said. “But she was paying attention only to her son.” Mrs. Kadhim was apparently shot as she held her son in her arms. The car then caught fire after the Blackwater guards fired some type of grenade into the vehicle. Ahmed’s father later counted 40 bullet holes in the car.

An initial burst of gunfire was followed by a torrent of bullets unleashed by the mercenaries, even as the Iraqi civilians were turning their vehicles around and attempting to flee. No witnesses to the shootings have reported gunfire coming from Iraqis in and around the square.

Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver, told the Times in 2007, “The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car.” He said he saw a woman dragging her child’s body. “He was around 10 or 11. He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.”

According to the 2007 Iraqi government investigation, Blackwater helicopters flying overhead also fired into cars, leaving bullet holes in car roofs. According to the Iraqi probe, in a separate shooting several minutes later, a Blackwater convoy, possibly the same one, moved north and fired on another line of traffic.

According to the Associated Press, the Blackwater mercenaries’ defense plans to call an expert witness who will “testify about the use of force in combat situations and the general threat level in Baghdad at the time of the shootings.” Another defense witness will testify that absolute proof of a perceived deadly or imminent threat is not required for a contractor to respond with deadly force.

At the height of the Iraq war, there were an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 security contractors employed by the US in its occupation. The activities of Blackwater and other private mercenaries were seamlessly integrated into the operations of the US State department and military. The September 2007 massacre was only one of the most publicized and egregious of the crimes of the Blackwater guards, who acted with impunity and with the support of the US government in terrorizing the Iraqi population.

In an effort to distance itself from its murderous operations in Iraq—particularly the 2007 massacre in the nation’s capital—Blackwater renamed itself Xe in 2009, and then Academi in 2011. According to recent German media reports, the US mercenary company is presently active directing the repression of pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine by the fascist forces of the NATO puppet regime installed in Kiev.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

Cenk Uygur discusses a video recently released by Harper’s Magazine that shows private contractors from Blackwater in Iraq hitting cars in traffic and running over a woman then fleeing the scene.

Blackwater is the mercenary firm founded as Blackwater USA in 1996 by former Navy SEAL and fundamentalist Christian Erik Prince. It received no-bid contracts from the Bush administration in Iraq, Afghanistan, and post-Katrina New Orleans. In 2009, Prince resigned as CEO. Amid scandals over misbehavior by Blackwater employees in Iraq, the company renamed itself Blackwater Worldwide in 2007, Xe Services in 2009, and Academi in 2011. Subsidiaries include Paravant LLC.

The shootings and the attendant publicity spelled the death knell for his company, which is now under new ownership.

The company was sold to a group of investors who changed the name to Academi.

Nicholas Slatten is charged with first-degree murder. The other three guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — are charged with voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and various gun charges.